Close to the Bone (12 page)

I mixed a rum and tonic for Alex and forbade her from helping. I steamed the mussels and dumped them into a big bowl, and we ate them at the table by the sliding doors, shelling them and dipping them in their own broth, while the potatoes baked in the oven and the sky darkened over the harbor. Then I tossed the salad and grilled the tuna.

By the time we cleaned up the kitchen, the moon had risen and the stars had begun to wink. We sat out on the balcony with our coffee and watched the reflections play on the water.

“Tell me about your day,” Alex said.

So I did, ending with my conversation with Olivia.

“She hired you?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“I’m not sure. To help, she said. I think she just wants support. She’s feeling alone and frightened.”

“Should I be jealous?”

I reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Olivia is rather attractive, actually, in a reserved, British sort of way. I’d prefer it if you were jealous. It’s only fair.”

“Because you’ve got Michael to be jealous of.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” she said. “You’ve got a deal.”

“Is the paper running the story?”

“Sure. It’s a pretty big story.”

“ ‘Criminal Defender Paul Cizek Lost at Sea,’ ” I said. “ ‘Presumed Drowned.’ ”

“Something like that.” She sighed. “From what you said, it sounds like there’s more of a story there than that.”

“Maybe there is.”

“Any conflict if I look into it?”

“Not so far. Everything I told you up to Olivia’s phone call this afternoon is fair game. But since I’m now officially her lawyer, I won’t be able to tell you anything after today.”

“Cizek was sleeping with that girl?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Alex nodded. “Nothing very unusual about that, I guess.”

“Aside from the fact that Paul’s about twice her age.”

“What about this Thomas Gall?” she said.

I shrugged. “He threatened Paul in court, as you remember. He was there today. Maddy Wilkins said she’d seen him with Paul. I suppose an intrepid reporter might want to look into it.”

“I’m only going to be intrepid for another couple of months, you know.”

“I keep trying not to think about it.”

“We’ll work it out.”

“Sure.”

“My lease is up at the end of August. I told my landlord I’m not renewing it. I’ve got to start looking for a cheap place in the country. Will you help me?”

“Of course.”

“Southern Vermont, maybe. Or Maine or New Hampshire. Massachusetts is just too expensive.”

I stared out over the harbor.

Alex’s hand touched my leg. “It’s not exactly Montana, Brady.”

“No,” I said. “I’d never see you if you went to Montana.”

“Unless you came with me. Then we’d see each other all the time, no matter where we were.” She laid her head on my shoulder. “I want you to do what you want to do.”

“Easier said than done.”

“I just hate to see you stuck.”

I thought of Paul Cizek. He’d felt stuck. A lot of men my age got stuck. Some of them stayed stuck all their lives. Some of them managed to get unstuck. And some of them tried to unstick themselves and failed to survive the process.

I spotted Gloria standing back from the crowd at the baggage claim area at the United terminal. I took Alex’s hand. “Come on,” I said to her.

Gloria saw us coming and smiled. I hugged her and she kissed my cheek.

“Gloria,” I said, “this is Alex.”

They shook hands. “I’ve read your stuff in the Globe,” Gloria said. “You’re very good.”

“Thanks,” said Alex. “Brady’s showed me some of your photographs. I like them a lot.”

The two of them smiled at each other, and the next thing I knew they were standing there chattering in soft voices, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that they were comparing notes on my various idiosyncracies and shortcomings.

I kept looking for Joey, and when he appeared I didn’t recognize him for an instant. His hair was longer and his tan was deeper than I’d ever seen. When he’d left for California a year earlier, he was a boy. Now he looked like an adult.

“Hey, Dad,” he said. He held out his hand. I shook it. We hesitated, then I gave him a hug. “I was hoping you’d be here,” he added.

“It was your mother’s idea.”

“I tried to call,” he said. “Got your machine.”

“You didn’t leave a message.”

“I was calling collect.” He smiled. “I was at Billy’s. I didn’t want to stick him with the cost.”

Joey gathered his bags and we found a coffee shop in the terminal. Joey told us about his year at Stanford and his visit with his brother in Idaho, and after ten or fifteen minutes he abruptly turned to Gloria and said, “We gotta get going. I told Debbie I’d be there by midnight.”

“You have a date?” I said. “At midnight?”

“I haven’t seen her in almost a year, Pop.”

You haven’t seen me for a year, either, I thought. But I just nodded. “That’s a long time.”

“Neither of us has been going out,” he said. “You know how it is.”

“I can imagine,” I said.

The four of us walked to the parking garage. We stopped at Gloria’s car. I shook hands with Joey. “Let me know when you have a day off,” I said. “We’ll come down and go fishing or something.”

“That’d be great,” he said.

Alex exchanged kisses with Joey and Gloria. I gave Gloria a hug. Then I took Alex’s hand and we went looking for my car.

“Oh, I like her,” said Alex as we prowled the aisles of parked cars.

“Gloria?”

“Yes. I can see why you married her.”

“Can you see why I divorced her?”

She squeezed my arm. “No. But I’m sure you had your reasons.”

“We both did.”

When we found my car and got in, Alex leaned toward me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed my ear. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

“Me? Sure. Why?”

“Joey was pretty itchy to leave.”

“I remember how it was.”

“Kids grow up,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “We all do, eventually.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING ALEX
and I took the fat Sunday
Globe
and mugs of coffee out to the balcony. A few puffy white clouds floated in a clear blue sky. The breeze carved whitecaps on the blue water six stories below. White gulls wheeled in the sunlight. Another beautiful blue-and-white June day.

“You don’t want to go lie on a beach or something, do you?” I said to Alex.

She was wearing jogging shorts and one of my big, baggy T-shirts. Her long, smooth legs were stretched out in front of her with her heels up on the railing. “God, no,” she said. “All that sand and sweat, all those people with bad bodies in skimpy bathing suits throwing Frisbees and playing rap music on their boom boxes and making out on blankets. Are you kidding?”

“Actually, I was.”

“You probably want to go fishing.”

“Sure. I’d like to go fishing. But I’m not going to.”

“You’re thinking about Paul Cizek.”

“Yes. And Olivia.”

“You could worry about them while you’re fishing, couldn't you?”

“I couldn’t worry properly. The trout would keep interfering. On the other hand, the worrying would interfere with the fishing. So I think I’ll stick close to the phone.”

We sipped coffee and kept swapping sections of the newspaper. After a while, Alex took our mugs in for refills, and when she came back she asked for the real estate section. She poked her glasses onto her nose and began studying it with a felt-tipped pen in her hand.

Precisely at noon, she took the real estate pages inside. I remained on the balcony. I could hear Alex talking on the phone. After a while, I wandered inside. She was seated at the kitchen table with the real estate ads spread out in front of her. She had marked them up with her pen, and she was writing notes on a yellow legal pad. The phone was wedged against her ear. She looked up at me, smiled quickly, then dropped her eyes and resumed her conversation.

I refilled my mug and went back out to the balcony.

She was really going to do it.

That evening, Alex and I drove out of the city to David’s Bistro in Acton. It was a quiet, intimate little country place where there were no city noises or city people. We parked out back, and when we got out of the car, Alex started for the door but I held her arm. “Wait,” I said. “Sniff the air.”

She tipped up her head and snuffled loudly. Then she turned to me. “What?”

“A little trout stream flows not far from here. Nashoba Brook. It was one of the places I used to come to on opening day of the fishing season. A long time ago, when I was a kid. Can’t you smell it?”

“I guess I don’t know what a trout stream is supposed to smell like.”

“It smells a lot like the absence of automobile exhaust and hot pavement and electricity,” I said. “It smells of cold wet gravel and sun-warmed rocks and mayfly wings.”

She sniffed again. “Okay,” she said. “Sure. I got it now.” She turned and put her arms around my neck. “I’m learning, huh?”

I kissed her forehead. “We’re both learning,” I said.

The pretty young hostess led us to our favorite corner table. She brought a bourbon old-fashioned for me and a gin and tonic for Alex. We declined appetizers. Alex went for the duckling and I ordered the pork tenderloin.

We touched glasses. “To mayfly wings,” said Alex.

We sipped our drinks and Alex started telling me about her latest conversation with her agent, when she abruptly stopped and lifted her eyes. “Hello,” she said.

I half turned. Glen Falconer was standing behind my shoulder. “Sorry to bother you,” he said. “I saw you come in. Wanted to say hi.”

He held out his hand and I took it. “Hi, Glen,” I said.

Alex extended her hand toward him. “I’m Alex Shaw,” she said.

He shook her hand. “I know,” he said. “And I know you know me, too. You covered my trial.”

Alex glanced up at Glen, then looked at me.

I frowned at her and mouthed the word “no,” but she pretended not to notice. “Won’t you sit with us for a minute?” she said.

“Well, sure,” said Glen. “Thanks. Just for a minute.” He pulled over a chair from an adjacent table and sat down. He had an empty highball glass in his hand. He craned his neck, caught a waitress’s attention, and held up his glass. Then he turned to me. “I never thanked you,” he said.

“For what?”

“For getting Paul Cizek for me. He saved my ass. Pardon me, Miss Shaw,” he said to Alex.

“Brady talks that way all the time,” she said.

“That Cizek,” said Glen expansively. “Some lawyer. Did a number on dear old Dad, all right.” He chuckled. “Did a number on everybody. Witnesses, jury, judge. Reporters, too.” He glanced at Alex. “You know what I mean, Miss?”

Alex did not smile. “Sure. I know what you mean.”

“I should have gone to prison,” said Glen. “And I didn’t. How ’bout that?”

“That makes you a lucky guy, I guess,” I said. Glen, I realized, had already had a few drinks. His eyes glittered and his movements seemed slow and studied, as if he had to plan them out before making them.

“Anyhow,” he continued, “I quit driving.”

“Way to go,” I said. “Congratulations.”

He either ignored or didn’t get my sarcasm. “Thanks. I feel good about it. I’ve got a bicycle, so I can drink all I want, and if I drive drunk, at least the only person I’ll hurt will be myself for a while.”

“For a while?” I said.

“Oh, I’ll climb back behind the wheel one of these days. You can’t keep a good man down, huh? But for now it’s the bike. That’s how I got here. On my bike.”

“You pedaled here from Lincoln?” asked Alex.

“Yes, ma’am. Still living with my daddy, riding my bike around town.”

“That’s a long bike ride, isn’t it?” she said. “All the way from Lincoln?”

“I haven’t got anything else to do,” he said. “I ride the bike everywhere. It passes the time.”

The waitress sidled up to the table and placed a fresh highball in front of Glen. She hesitated, then said to me, “Shall I hold your salads for a few minutes?”

“No,” I said. “We’re starved.”

“Another drink, Mr. Coyne? Miss Shaw?”

Alex shook her head. “We’re fine, thanks,” I said.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” said Glen. “I just wanted to say hello.”

“Sure,” I said. “Take it easy.”

Glen picked up his drink and took a swallow. “I liked your editorial, by the way,” he said to Alex.

“Editorial?” she said.

“The one you wrote the day after the trial. The one saying I should’ve been thrown in prison.”

“That was unsigned,” she said. “It represented the editorial position of the paper.”

He nodded and smiled. “Sure. But you wrote it. It’s okay. It was good. Maybe they
should
have found me guilty.” He looked down at the table. “Sometimes I wish they had.”

“You’ve got to live with it,” I said.

“It’s hard.”

“The booze helps, huh?”

He looked up at me. “I can’t quit drinking, Brady. So I quit driving cars. I figure if I kill myself, who cares? My life is ruined anyway.”

“I think our salads are coming,” I said.

Glen frowned at me. “Huh? Oh. Sorry. I’ll get back to my table.” He stood up, then reached hastily for his chair, which threatened to topple over. “Nice to see you folks. Sorry to interrupt your dinner. I’ll just get back to my table now.”

With studied precision, Glen turned his chair around and slid it back into its place at the next table. Then he picked up his highball and held it aloft. “Thank you both again,” he said solemnly. “Thank you very much.”

Alex and I watched him pick his way carefully across the dining room to a table against the far wall.

“He’s eating alone,” said Alex.

“Don’t even think of it.”

“Oh, I wasn’t,” she said. “Still, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him.”

“Don’t,” I said. “He doesn’t deserve your sympathy. Did you hear him?
His
life is ruined? Like he didn’t ruin the lives of that woman and her family?”

She smiled. “You’re a hard man, Brady Coyne.”

“He should’ve gone to prison. Did you hear him? He admits he can’t quit drinking, and he’s looking forward to climbing back behind the wheel.”